"Is there nothing?" he whispered eagerly in her ear. "Have you nothing more to confess to me?"
Katrine gave herself up to his embrace, a delicious sense of peace and protection and warm comfort stealing over her such as she had never known.
"Nothing," she murmured, with her soft lips close to his ear and her silky curls touching his neck. She felt Stephen grasp her close to him, and a tremor ran through his whole frame.
"Have you never lain like this in a man's arms before? never felt a kiss on your lips?" he persisted, holding her to him with a fierce intensity of growing passion.
"Never, never," Katrine answered, opening her calm dark eyes and looking straight up to his.
Stephen met their gaze for one long second, a proud, tranquil, fearless look that sunk deep into his soul and poured balm into every wound she had ever made there. The next moment she felt a torrent of hot kisses on her face, a pressure that almost stifled her on her breast, a murmur of "Darling, my darling," and knew nothing very clearly any more except that she was loved and very happy.
CHAPTER V
GOLD-PLATED
The next afternoon, when Stephen returned to the west gulch and Talbot heard his news, he said he was glad, and meant it. Life at the gulch was very desolate and dreary, and such a bright glad presence as the girl's would alleviate the monotony and disperse the gloom.